Our Stories

Vasey RSL Care has a long and proud tradition of caring for, providing accommodation for, and supporting the ex-service community – veterans and war widows.

Those who have served their country in war face unimaginable situations, while those who serve in peace time are ready to do the same. The spouses of our forces face their own hardships and for those whose partners do not return home, life changes for ever.

Approximately two-thirds of those in our residential homes are from the ex-service community, while 99% of the residents in our independent living units are veterans and war widows.

Here we tell the stories of some of those who have served, been widowed, or have just found a home at Vasey RSL Care.

But when Gordon Sampson was growing up in the British port city of Plymouth at the end of World War II, the Royal Navy had no problem recruiting him. And Gordon didn’t seem to have a choice about joining the Royal Marines at that age. It seems like his father had him dragooned!

Even now, aged 77, Kevin ‘Butch’ Brady is an imposing figure. When he was fighting fit and a Platoon Sergeant at his peak in Vietnam, he must have been intimidating.

Kevin claims the honour of having led the only documented bayonet charge in the Vietnam War, during Operation Bribie. We are used to seeing images of bayonets fixed on 303 rifles, but not on the lighter-weight, semi-automatic FN FALs carried by Australians into the jungle and rice paddies of Vietnam. However odd it may have looked, the bayonet charge by two platoons had the desired effect.